"We know we farked up royally with characters, itemization, and loot in D3. BUT if you pay $60 more, it'll play like it should have when it was released in the first place."

/60x5//doubt I'll pick up the xpac on day 1; MAYBE after a price drop and a half dozen patches

Doubt that the paragon 2.0 and loot 2.0 wouldn't effect vanilla players as well. Only the level caps, crusader, and maybe the two new modes are likely to require RoS.

Only the loot updates are confirmed to be part of a free patch for D3C afaik.

Updated. Not that anyone cares anymore... day old thread.

Is loot 2.0 coming WITH Reaper of Souls, or will it come before RoS?Grimiku: We want to implement a lot of the new systems and features in a pre-expansion patch for free. That should include Paragon 2.0, Loot 2.0, Loot Runs, and Nephalem Trials. For now, you'll need to purchase the expansion to play as the Crusader, explore Act V, unlock the Mystic, and level up to 70. These details may change as development moves along, but we want some of the core gameplay improvements to be available for everyone.

I played the hell out of D2 and I got about a week into D3 and dropped it.;

It's just BORING. In a game about "getting loot" there is very little motivation to actually get any loot because of two major reasons:

1) The auction house makes it too easy to find stuff you want/need to progress the game.2) The simplification of the skill system has reduced a lot of the complexity and replayabilty of the game

To me these are two real big problems. I have a lot of fond memories of grinding out D2 loot runs to try and find a specific item with a specific enchantment so that it would work well and "mesh" with the skills I assigned to my character. It may sound counter intuitive, but by making it so that there are no real decisions on your character skill progression, they took out a lot of the motivation to go out and acquire the loot in the first place.

Kyro:% of American households are online. I'm making a wild assumption that the Diablo 3 crowd is going to mostly fall into that 98%.

Now granted, I disagree with Blizzard's requirement for an active internet connection purely out of outage issues and American gamers abroad(mostly deployed soldiers). But that was certainly not enough to make me pull my hair out as it was for so many people.

/And I literally fell asleep playing Torchlight 2.

Wow....and you're supposedly a "web-app developer"?

A quick Google-search and some current statistics are showing that 78% of Americans are online (meaning, any sort of online, including dial-up). Furthermore, approximately 6% of the population don't even have a high-speed internet option where they live, and even still approximately 1/3rd of the 78% who have internet connections are choosing to not have high-speed internet for whatever reason.

By my fuzzy math, that means approximately 50% of all Americans cannot play Diablo 3 due to the internet requirement. Sure, argue that those who are choosing to not have high-speed but have it available in their area maybe wouldn't buy it anyway, but there are still many who would if it didn't have that requirement.

People who loved D2 but weren't enchanted by D3 should look into Path of Exile.

F2P, no oppressive pay to win, great core gameplay and a ton of special events/modes (like races to a certain level, or competitions to see who can go the furthest in a limited time, with rewards handed out for in-game customizations and such).

Kyro:B-b-but.. they added a completely optional real-money system. Only monsters do that.

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I know you're trolling, but there's a huge difference here: TF2 sold items you can find or trade for without selling money that did not give you an edge over your competitors (sure, it changed how you might play the class, but all weapons were theoretically balanced--new functions came with disadvantages). D3, on the other hand, allowed items to be sold that basically made you go from garbage to top-player (some argue that they were even required with out infrequently you find them).

Furthermore, TF2 items dropped frequently enough that I personally NEVER purchased an item, yet managed to collect every item that offered new game-play experiences. Diablo 3 I farmed for 3 months and only once got a good item for my class...which I ended up selling for $90 when I quit the game anyway.

Torchlight 2 had the gameplay D3 should have had. Unfortunately the story for the Torchilight games is lame, Diablo had great storylines.

But yes, Diablo 3 blew and Blizzard is basically trying to turn everything they own into Facebook games now. fark that. I don't want to update my status when I'm playing Starcraft 2. Who the hell thought I would?

BraveNewCheneyWorld:All they had to do was make Diablo II with different graphics and a few new additions, but no, they had to ruin the fun of finding your own shiat so they could prop up their real money auction house.

Blizzard hasn't given a flying fark about quality in their products since at least the first WoW expansion. Ever since Kotick got his filthy, shiat-stained paws into the mix the only thing that's come out of Blizzard has been by-committee trash designed exclusively to the bottom line.

Can't fault the success of the outcome, though. They knew braindead fanboys would buy anything they were told to buy so it's not like they really had to give a shiat about the people who weren't emotionally locked to the company and just wanted to continue seeing quality products released.